World Steampunk Expo is tomorrow. Cruel Wife and I will be attending sans kids. Last time one or two attendees were a bit spooky and the kids were into everything. Getting into everything is fine if the stuff on the vendors’ tables is meant to be gotten into but they were behind and underneath tables and touching “do not touch” things, which was stressful and didn’t allow for browsing much.
I’ll see if I can snap some pictures. Tomorrow morning we’re going to show up for the Professors Foglio demo, where they show how they create the graphics for Girl Genius.
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Watched another of my favorite movies tonight.
I am fully aware that it got a lot of not-so-good reviews and even had to go look up a word: Mawkish.
I’m afraid I just don’t see it though.
I’d probably help readers by passing on the name. Bicentennial Man.
It’s one of those movies, like Secondhand Lions, where the viewer has to bring something to the party. If all one can bring to the experience is a soul with shallow depths as yet unplumbed, then of course one will see nothing of value.
Oh sure, I can see how someone might say “mawkish” when describing the movie but what I can’t see is how someone could not look at their life and see a little bit of truth reflected there.
And it could be viewed as sad or maybe even bittersweet (not quite the word I’m searching for though). One would have to be blind to not see the contrast between the humor, sadness, callousness, and insightful moments and perhaps you could even choose to ignore parts of it, buffet-style. I argue that it would be a disservice to one’s self to ignore the sad and take in only the good because put simply that is what makes life noteworthy. It’s the highs and the lows that are the scaffolding that props up the metaphors of our life as we segue from one into the next.
Yes, I know it is exceedingly odd to go from Duke Nukem Forever to this. No, I haven’t been drinking.
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Over at Science Daily where real science is never allowed to get between a reader and sensationalism.
There is water inside the moon — so much, in fact, that in some places it rivals the amount of water found within Earth.
One who doesn’t read a lot of science papers and proposals would probably say “Ho-leeeee-shiat! There could be space fish on the moon!”
That sentence tells you absolutely nothing. Nothing at all.
Take a shovelful of lunar soil, pluck out the one rock that has a perfect tablespoon of water sealed up in the center. Now you have water inside the moon and in some places (one) it rivals the amount of water found within Earth.
Elsewhere on Earth, scientists have studied the sphericity of the electron and found it to be spherical to within one umpteenooglity-eth of a meter.
Researchers from Imperial College London conducted a decade-long laser experiment on the subatomic particle and discovered that it differs from a perfect sphere by less than 0.000000000000000000000000001 of a centimeter — so that “if the electron were magnified to the size of the solar system, it would still appear spherical within the width of a human hair.”
“I don’t know of any naturally-occurring object that is rounder and has been measured to the same level of accuracy,” said research leader Dr. Jony Hudson, writing in the journal Nature.
[Note: I’m sure that cbullitt over at Soylent Green has some pitchers of underboob that is significantly rounder than that.]
“Why is that important?” the authors were asked.
“Well, we really don’t know but if you give us a lot more money we’ll see if we can make some guesses at it.”
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Over at PopSci there’s an article about really sharp blades and cutting through things like pop cans with knives.
Which is really cool and all.
But invariably you have some “I Know ****ing Everything” jackass who writes comments like this and it really chaps my ass.
@inaka_rob
mythbusters are liars. they are paid to misinform their audience. i can do this with a blunt butter knife. its all about technique.
Well, you’ll have to watch the video, but when some wanker says something incredibly stupid like “i can do this with a blunt butter knife” I want to use my godlike abilities to freeze the world, put the guy on a stage, unfreeze the world and have every one of 6+ billion souls watch him as he performs an epic FAIL with his blunt butter knife. And then if I actually had such powers I’d allow all 6+ billion people the chance to wedge one of their shoes in his ass and send him on his way. And then he’d have to walk 20 miles home – with all 6+ billion shoes up his ass.
This is probably why I have no godlike powers.
And then someone needs to show him how to use capital letters. Peeve of mine. The wanker.
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Yes, never mind that no seismologist has ever predicted an earthquake.
Yeah, I’m not sure what mawkish means off the top of my head, so I have no response to that. I did enjoy Bicentennial Man, seen it several times, and will probably own a copy someday.
Again, as in so many other examples, the critics seem out of touch with what makes a genuinely good movie. I can only attribute this to the fact they see so many movies all the time that they’re desensitized, and only a cinematic work that’s shocking or outrageous can break through the thick ‘crust’ they’ve built up. They don’t seem to have any concept that the normal man or woman going to the theater does not want to be shocked to the depths of his soul, or leave the theater feeling as if his soul was put through a woodchipper.
Yeah, I couldn’t believe that anyone would actually consider charging a scientist with manslaughter because he couldn’t predict a disaster. Hell, we had a lot of destruction here in Kansas and Missouri the last three weeks because of tornadoes. Should we sue the local weathermen because they didn’t warn us well in advance of the upcoming twisters?
Sheesh.
Have fun at the fair! Tell everybody I said “Hey!”
I read “Bicentennial Man” many years ago but avoided the movie entirely because Robin Williams.
Actually, Mitchell, I can’t see someone I’d rather see in that part than Robin Williams.
His crowning achievement to date is Good Will Hunting, IMHO. Here, I think he did a good job of transitioning through stages of maturation.